Food Not Bombs

Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives that distribute free, usually vegan and vegetarian food. This food is typically sourced from donations or from salvaging and then served in public spaces or at activist gatherings. There are about 1,000 FNB collectives in about 60 countries around the world. It is often considered an anarchist or anarchist-inspired group, as well as a form of franchise activism.
The first FNB collective was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by members of the anti-nuclear movement. After hosting a soup kitchen as a form of "street theater", the group dedicated themselves to feeding people full time. In the late 1980s, FNB co-founder Keith McHenry moved to San Francisco, where he founded a second FNB collective amidst a mass houselessness crisis in the area. By the early 1990s, there were about 30 active FNB collectives in both the United States and Canada. Soon after FNB's first international gathering in 1992, more collectives were founded in cities across the world.
FNB collectives have been involved in many mass protest movements, including the anti-globalization movement, the Occupy movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Gaza war protests, often participating in demonstrations and feeding protesters. Some collectives have faced legal reprisals such as tickets and arrests for their foodshares, often due to city permitting laws.
FNB's principles include veganism, vegetarianism, the distribution of free food, group autonomy, consensus decision-making, and nonviolent direct action. Many of its members are migrant workers, punks, underemployed people, unhoused people, and university students organized as unpaid volunteers. Some scholars note the transgressive nature of FNB's activism. Others discuss its foodshares as a form of altruistic gift-giving.

History

Background

During the early 1960s, the New Left emerged as a social force in the United States. Associated with groups like the Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality, the New Left advocated for participatory democracy and greater rights for minorities while opposing the Vietnam War. By the late 1970s, many New Left groups had fractured. However, a new style of radicalism also emerged during the 1970s. This style was defined by its belief in decentralized structures, feminist-inspired politics, and the use of anarchist methods like affinity groups and direct action.
Many activists from the 1970s anti-nuclear movement adopted this style. Among these activists, members of the Clamshell Alliance, originally founded in 1976 to oppose the construction of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, protested against the nuclear power industry using direct action tactics such as occupations and guerrilla gardening. Between 1976 and 1977, the alliance occupied the Seabrook plant three times. In 1979, after a debate about another potential occupation, an alliance faction split off to form the Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook, which organized two failed occupation attempts: one in 1979 and one in 1980.

Origins

During the 1980 occupation, coalition member Brian Fiegenbaulm was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer. To raise money to cover his legal expenses, a group of coalition members in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts organized a bake sale. Dressed in military uniforms and holding a sign that said, "I'm waiting for the day when schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale for a bomber", they sold pastries in Boston.
On March 26, 1981, after Fiegenbaulm was released, the group organized a soup kitchen across from the First National Bank of Boston, which was one of the sponsors for the Seabrook plant. Dressed as "hobos", they hoped to evoke the soup kitchens of the Great Depression through what one of the group's members, Keith McHenry, later called "street theater". They also handed out leaflets saying that contemporary government policies would lead to widespread houselessness. Between 50 and 70 people ate at the kitchen, and soon after, the group decided to dedicate themselves to feeding people full time.
Around this time, McHenry was working at the organic food cooperative Bread and Circus, often salvaging food from the cooperative to donate to a local housing project. The headquarters for Draper Laboratory, which designed guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles, was located across the street from this housing project. According to McHenry, this was the inspiration for the name Food Not Bombs.

Early years

During its first two years, FNB primarily focused on bulk food distribution, food tables, and distributing literature. Its members squatted in a house on Harvard Street, collecting food salvage and seeking donations from health food stores. They then redistributed this food to drug rehabilitation clinics, immigrant rights organizations, service groups for unhoused people, soup kitchens, and Rosie's Place, a local women's shelter. They also provided free vegan meals in Harvard Square every Monday and participated in marches against nuclear weapons, including the March for Nuclear Disarmament in New York City. This march took place on June 12, 1982, and was the biggest protest in the history of the United States at the time. That year, FNB also sponsored a "Free Concert for Nuclear Disarmament" in Boston and participated in a 10-day protest against Reaganomics at Boston Common, providing meals to protesters.
In the late 1980s, FNB began focusing on United States interventions in Central America. In 1985, it helped organize an occupation of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building to protest President Ronald Reagan's Central America policy. When PepsiCo set up a tent where people could participate in the Pepsi Challenge next to an FNB tent, FNB organized a "tofu smoothie challenge", distributing tofu smoothies and brochures on the Coca-Cola Company's deployment of death squads against Guatemalan labor organizers while criticizing Pepsi's lack of nutrition. It also produced several films about United States intervention in the Salvadoran Civil War.

Spread to California

In 1987 or 1988, McHenry moved to San Francisco, where he founded a second FNB collective. According to McHenry, this second collective was inspired by peace activist Brian Willson, who had had his legs severed by a train during a rail blockade along the Sacramento River. As one of its first actions, the San Francisco collective worked with the anti-nuclear organization American Peace Test to distribute food to protesters at the Nevada Test Site. There, its members encountered a Long Beach group called "Bread Not Bombs", inspired by FNB Cambridge. This group became the third FNB collective.
By the 1980s, San Francisco was experiencing a mass houselessness crisis due to stagnating wages, high housing prices and unemployment, mass evictions, a decline in apartment hotels and other public housing options, and Reagan-era welfare state rollbacks. Many of the newly unhoused needed food, and FNB activists noted that there were no organizations providing free meals in the Haight-Ashbury district. As a result, the San Francisco collective began regularly serving food at the intersection of Haight and Stanyan Streets, near Golden Gate Park.

Permitting controversy

FNB San Francisco struggled to obtain a permit for its Haight-Ashbury kitchen, with police arguing that the foodshares drew substance abusers and other "troublemakers" to the park and asking FNB to relocate its services to nearby Hamilton Methodist Church. Meanwhile, McHenry argued that a more visible public site was necessary for the collective to operate. On August 15, 1988, a group of 45 riot police arrested 9 FNB activists for serving food without a permit. Photos of the arrests were published in the San Francisco Chronicle, and a week later, between 150 and 200 people marched through the Haight-Ashbury district to protest the arrests. 29 of these protesters were arrested. While protests against the San Francisco Police Department continued to escalate, the department defended the arrests, with an SFPD public relations officer arguing that FNB was making a "political statement", not just giving away food. Ultimately, in September 1988, Art Agnos, the mayor of San Francisco, issued a 60-day permit permit to FNB to distribute food at the intersection of Stanyan and Page Streets. A second permit was issued on February 1, 1989.
On June 28, 1989, FNB San Francisco organized a 24-hour soup kitchen for a tent city protest at Civic Center Plaza, in front of San Francisco City Hall. The encampment, called Camp Agnos, protested what they perceived as the city's failure to address houselessness and high housing prices. After FNB occupied Agnos's office as part of the protest, the city filed an injunction against it for serving food in the plaza and revoked its permit to serve food near Golden Gate Park. It later regained this permit and also received a permit to serve food at the Civic Center Plaza, but these permits were also revoked on July 6, 1990, with the passage of a law making it more difficult to obtain food distribution permits in the city. On January 25, 1991, McHenry was charged with contempt of court for breaking the city's injunction and on February 14, asked to serve 40 days in jail. On March 22, the injunction was dropped.

Global spread

On October 9, 1992, FNB held its first international gathering in San Francisco. About 75 people attended the gathering from about 30 active FNB collectives, including several from Canada. During this gathering, FNB activists outlined the group's guiding principles. After this meeting, FNB activists served food to activists from the American Indian Movement who had come to protest the Columbus quincentennial celebrations being held in the city.
Soon after this first gathering, FNB collectives were founded in London, Melbourne, Montreal, Prague, and in cities across the United States. Over 600 people attended a second international gathering in San Francisco in 1994, which consisted of ten days of workshops, protests, street theater, and tent cities.